Explaining WLAN Chips' Poor Linux Support

morcheeba writes "Kernel Traffic is reporting (mirror mirror list) that 'Some WLAN Chip Specs Secret To Protect Military Communications.' While this is stretching it a bit -- these radios are generally limited to a narrow frequency range and few modulation types -- software can cause illegal radio operation, especially when the laws vary by country. Is Linux support for 802.11g and Centrino chipsets going to be delayed by manufacturers afraid of FCC harassment? An interesting discussion on the future of Openness in radio chipsets." Interesting comments from Alan Cox in here about just how flexible some of these chips are.

I thought it was just about money

If 95%+ of your market will be Windows users, it might make financial sense to just worry about that 95% and develop support for them.

Re:Promotion?

How will advocates convince home users (a large chunk of that 95%)

Home users are not the issue here (and not the largest part of the 95% anyways). Businesses that may have, internally, 99% of their hardware running windows and 1% and growing running something else may choose another manufacturer's product because it supports 100% of thir machines. All you need to loose is one big sale and it would have been worthwhile to pay a developer a few thousand dollars to write a Linux driver. Are you saying companies should give up on trying to maximize profits, and start shooting for 95% instead?

6 months

And this won't be an issue

eh

What people need to realize is that nothing in software can be secure. It is far to easy to crack. You may have 100 developers working on a secure WiFi driver, but there are thousands of bored hackers out there waiting to tear it apart. If something needs to be secure, do it in hardware.

On a side note, I've not had any trouble getting my WiFi hardware to work on my slackware laptop, but I understand that some chipsets can be more difficult to setup than others.

Re:eh

Oh wait, I have an idea!

Let's require everyone to spend a week learning fundamentals of Unix and 500 bucks and another week putting together OpenBSD-compliant parts (not to mention the day or two researching what exactly will and will not work on BSD) just to give up because they can't figure out why the fuck EverQuest won't work! (Adknowledged, the real problem is that most consumer programs were developed with a direct connection and a modem in mind. Guess what? That's irrelevant.)

Yeah, sounds REAL swell.

Yes, Those Netgear and LinkSys boxes are really routers. They really work. Until you can tell me how to get a wireless solution up and running with BSD for an hour's work and under 150 dollars, your argument is irrelevant.

prism2 only!

I am not the only one unhappy with the very poor support of linux by many wifi chip vendors. Intersil seems to be the only one even close to being open, and you have to sign all sorts of agreements to get the specs (legally). My understanding of this is that a lot of the functions are being moved from the chip hardware to system software, so it's not just a device driver required to use these newer cards. Vendors don't want everyone to see their programming.

The prism2 were the first really popular wireless cards, partly because of low cost but also because of the ability to write drivers for them. I wish other manufacturers wouldn't be so reticent about their support. I actually prefer it if they keep the cards smart and the systems dumb, because it increases portability and compatibility. It probably adds to the cost though.

Time

When I went wireless on my Linux laptop about a year ago the only card I could get supported was the Lucen Orinoco. It's a great card. But now, many months later there is the WLAN project [linux-wlan.com] and many many cards are supported. The future will be the same. More support is coming. The major problem I see though is the manufaturers. They write drivers for windows. Most of them arn't about to write them for linux. Meaning that every piece of hardware will be a few months behind while a group of dedicated programers do the dirty work for the company.

Re:Time

why *should* card companies spend money to write drivers for linux when there are going to be enthusiasts that do it for them?

It makes no sense from a company viewpoint, other than to get the support from the 5% of people that are using thier cards with linux. But even so, if an independent driver is written, those people using linux are still going to be buying the company's cards with no out of pocket expense to the company.

It's kinda messed up.

Re:Time

Because the company gets respect and it's name out there amonge a group of power users and frequent buyers. Look at NVidia. They sure get a lot of coverage on Slashdot. Much of this is due to their great Linux drivers. If they made great cards that wern't supported or had poor/shotty support many fewer Slashdot readers would care one witt about what NVidia does. When Apple embraced open source all of a sudden they got a whole second army of geeks following. Why does it make sense to write drivers in support of linux? Because the 5% of the people that will use those products have a lot of influence in a much larger comunity. (IT, business settings)

drivers take a little while

Linux drivers don't come from the Driver Fairy, they usually get written by volunteers. That takes a while: getting the specs, implementing the drivers, testing them, etc. And it usually only happens after the hardware is starting to sell. So, it may well take a year or two for Linux drivers to appear for a piece of hardware. If you want it to happen faster, volunteer yourself.

Of course, a few manufacturers do ship their own Linux drivers. That's nice, but it isn't all that common yet. And many of the drivers that do ship from manufacturers are based on proprietary, commercial driver toolkits and have to be closed source.

Centrino is a special case. Centrino is largely a marketing construct, not a technology, and the marketing group that pushed Centrino inside Intel apparently wants to make Microsoft happy and doesn't like Linux. I doubt this is going to last: Linux is too important for Intel to maintain this position.

Re:drivers take a little while

That takes a while: getting the specs, implementing the drivers, testing them, etc. And it usually only happens after the hardware is starting to sell. So, it may well take a year or two for Linux drivers to appear for a piece of hardware. If you want it to happen faster, volunteer yourself.

The problem with 802.11x support under Linux is that the specs are being kept under wraps. The card manufacturers say the reason is that their cards could be reprogrammed to transmit on reserved frequencies (military, air traffic control, etc.). Apparently, many of these manufacturers would like to make Linux drivers available, but they can't be free-as-in-speech without allowing any decent hacker to change the operating frequency and spy on or disrupt sensitive transmissions.

As for Linux Centrino support, Linux is not particularly important in the mobile market (excepting Linux-based embedded systems). Servers remain the primary Linux market; Linux laptops are more the domain of hobbyists. While I have no doubt that Centrino drivers will be available for Linux, if what you said about the marketing team in charge of Centrino is true, they will probably come from the hacker community rather than from Intel.

FYI incaseof /. fx

2. Some WLAN Chip Specs Secret To Protect Military Communications
28 Apr - 1 May (21 posts) Archive Link: "Broadcom BCM4306/BCM2050 support"
Topics: Networking
People: Martin List-Petersen, David S. Miller, Alan Cox, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger, Richard B. Johnson

Bas Mevissen asked if Linux had any support for Broadcom's BCM4306 or BCM2050 WLAN chips. He saw that the BCM4401 ethernet chip had a Linux driver, and was hopeful that maybe the WLAN chips did as well. Martin List-Petersen replied, "It seems, that the specs haven't been released yet. There are quite a few Wlan cards out there based on the Broadcom chips (nearly all cards, that support 802.11g), so it's quite a shame. (Actually this fits the the TrueMobile 1180, 1300 and 1400, speaking of Dell wireless lan cards)." He added, "The same problem is with the Intel Prowireless 2100 (Centrino) WLan card. No Linux support available yet, which is another choice for the Dell notebooks at the moment." But he also said there was a Petition folks could sign, regarding this very issue. Martin concluded, "I've tried to contact Broadcom directly, but they are just ignoring mails containing the word "Linux", so it seems." David S. Miller also said:

Don't expect specs or opensource drivers for any of these pieces of hardware until these vendors figure out a way to hide the frequency programming interface.

Ie. these cards can be programmed to transmit at any frequency, and various government agencies don't like it when f.e. users can transmit on military frequencies and stuff like that.

The only halfway plausible idea I've seen is to not document the frequency programming registers, and users get a "region" key file that has opaque register values to program into the appropriate registers. The file is per-region (one for US, Germany, etc.)and the wireless kernel driver reads in this file to do the frequency programming.

So don't blame the vendors on this one, several of them would love to publish drivers public for their cards, but simply cannot with upsetting federal regulators.

Alan Cox remarked that folks were already cracking the Windows interface on those cards, and that non-US governments cared about this issue as well. He said, "The fact people are already abusing the technology suggests that they will be forced to go the crypted settings route for next generation hardware anyway." And added, "I talked to one vendor about this stuff and fingers crossed we will see open drivers except for the radio module. In the longer term I suspect vendors will move to signed register sets, so you can load "US 802.11g" but you can't load "police frequency, full power""

At some point Bas suggested that if these vendors were really willing to release their specs, but were only holding back to satisfy government agencies, then maybe they could release some binary drivers in the interim. Martin replied to this, "I totally agree on this. A binary driver could better than nothing at this point. Another thing that wonders me, is why companies like Broadcom, if they are so open to releasing the drivers at some point, where they can make the regulation agencies somewhat happy, are so ignorant then. I've heard of serveral people, that tried to get a statement on the possibilty for Linux drivers from then and the return is nothing. I've actually tried myself. No response at all."

Elsewhere, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger's eyes lit up at the prospect of transmitting on military frequencies. He said he "wants binary only driver for these cards to build opensource driver with ability to set "interesting" frequency range." Martin said, "It's there for Windows." And at some point, Richard B. Johnson said:

Contrary to popular opinion, there is no FCC regulation prohibiting one from receiving some particular frequency. There is, however, a federal law prohibiting the disclosure of a radio message by a third party. This means that the media, or even law enforcement can't listen to a private radio (cell phone) conversation and then disc

Why not simply make it illegal to operate?

I can buy a regular transmitter and modify it to transmit on a forbidden frequency. Does that mean we can't sell transmitters or books telling people how to build one? No!

I think this is a straw man argument.

Re:Why not simply make it illegal to operate?

Don't expect the manufacturer to help you modify it, though. If you want to do that, you would have to reverse-engineer the radio yourself. Then you can do whatever to it. Similarly, if you reverse-engineer a wifi driver, you can write your own. It's just that the manufacturer won't help you.

Things to do with software radio

1. Listen to a baby cry over your neighbors' baby monitor.
2. Neighbor humping a lover in front of their baby monitor
3. Transmitting "Hey, that's my wife; I'm going to blow your balls off!"
4. Watch them scatter

illegal Radio Operation

Yeah - that reminds me of the wifi combo card Im using - its a prototype card that I've had for about 3 months that does A, B, and G. The software limits radio strength normally based on the country that you're in due to FCC regulations. However, the developer software allows you to set the power transmit - something thats actually illegal according to the FCC (the consumer is not allowed to sett the power level of the card).

It revolves around the business model

I was looking into doing some WLAN engineering but found that it was too difficult to do without getting hold of the documents. Since these chips are used primarily in high volume applications - i.e. OEMs using 10 of thousands at a time - the manufacturers don't give out the specs to the public. First, they don't want to deal with questions from someone who is not paying them for their engineering support services. And second, they don't want the competition getting hold of the future direction in the product that may be hinted at in their technical documentation. All the manufacturers that I know of require you to sign an NDA to get a copy.

The only real leverage that anyone has is only buying products that have explicit Linux support from the OEM.

wireless

I own a 3com Airconnect PCMCIA wireless card and even though there are open source drivers made for it, I still have a helluva time ever getting that card to work.

Why is it so hard to make a decent driver that works well and is easy to configure? Is there some sort of problem dealing with Linux as compared to Windows that makes it so tough? Or is it simply because of supply and demand?

Only TCPA-compliant systems

Will be allowed to use these.

Any other use will be considered a federal crime. You are a terrorist. Those convicted will be required to purchase and install a copy of Microsoft's current OS for each CPU they own. Too bad if you have a SMP system.

Having worked in the field before...

with 2.4Ghz ISM wireless network stuff, anyway... on the manufacturing & design side...

This is something I hadn't thought of in terms of software. I mean, if you make, say, a wireless router, there are various laws you have to follow to get approval in various places.. things like :

The antenna connector has to be non-standard. This is why you'll see like, a TNC conenctor with the threads reversed, or the gender parts half swapped, etc. It's so consmers don't hook it up to amplifiers and things.. or rather, so they understand that they are not supposed to. The same goes for software functions.. there are many functions accessible in the software that would allowt eh device to operate outside of the allowabloe parameters, but we had to keep those hidden & inaccessible. If they were presented to the customer, the customer woudl be able to violate FCC just by using commands we supplied them.

So.. I never considered that with regards to linux drivers.. but it is a good point.

Wires

Wires [belkin.com] are where it's at.

No problem getting the specs. You want CAT5e? CAT6? RS-232? How about some coax?

Be it twisted pair, fibre optic, stranded, or even tin cans on a string, wires are the future.

the _REAL_ reason for no drivers...

Many of the chipset makers feel that their 'drivers' are also their IP. In the wireless space, the first to market folks get to make the rules. In the case of 802.11a, Atheros was the first to market. There existed a 'binary only' driver that was built on a mandrake linux box. The bad news is the way it was built made it completely useless. I've not heard of anyone having sucuess using it. Rumor has it that Atheros built this driver & they would release 'formal' drivers for their chipsets. This hasn't happened yet. I doubt it will until they have somebody else providing 802.11a chipsets. To them, it's about getting market share & protecting IP.

Recent developments:

Reyk Floeter [vantronix.net] has started building a GPL driver. It's amusing based on the context of this article, because all this driver can do is SNIFF. That's right, RX Only. Progress has been very slow, and there have been several questions to the list as to how this driver exists, and how it's being built. It would seem that Reyk doesn't have any of the specs & hasn't signed an NDA. I assume he's reverse engineering the windows drivers, but he hasn't stated as much. The development progress has been _VERY_ slow, and this project needs help from OSS devs. Anyone up for a challenge?

Intellegraphics [intelligraphics.com] signed the NDA, and has a driver 'for sale'.

While the government has it's paws in everything, I doubt this is the case at this point. This whole article is based on FUD.

That's all. -Eric Johanson, SeattleWireless [seattlewireless.net]

From Broadcom's site...

What I don't understand is why this page [broadcom.com] on Broadcom's site specifies that there are available embedded Linux drivers, yet they are nowhere to be found.

Doesn't explain it all!

I have been buying 802.11 cards like crazy trying to find one that will work well with Linux for mobile self-propelled linux boxes.

WHat I have found is that almost all the new cards out there, brand name, no name, etc, are based on the broadcom chip, for which there is no driver.

Now it's true that there are wierd FCC rules, such as the one that the antenna connectors must be proprietary, as if that makes a difference, but that doesn't explain certain things.

For instance, the SMC, Siemens, and Linksys cards all USED to work. The new cards from these vendors, such as the Linksys WPC11, don't work, but have the SAME MODEL NUMBER even though they are entirely different cards. They all give the same codes or similar when inserted, they all have similar antenna shapes, they all have two dimples in the bottom of the antenna where one dimple has a bump from the injection molder.

Now, the only difference I can see on the BOX between the old and the new ones is that the new ones mention Windows XP. So, can it be that MS would only support chipsets with proprietary specs? It sure looks that way. I really can't understand why multiple vendors would completely change the card and keep the same model number. This makes no sense. I think it's as simple as not supporting linux compatible hardware in each release of windows. Not so far fetched, how many product boxes do you see that even MENTION linux? You're not gonna get that 'designed for windows XP' logo if you don't do as you're told.

Now, the older cards work just fine, I have a prism card and it's great. Problem is I only have one, which serves no purpose at all. ALso, aparantly the Netgear card DOES work, but not well, under linux, and Cisco's Aironets are supposed to work fine, though they cost twice as much and I'll gladly pay, but I have yet to find a retail channel for these (help)

So I've bought six different types of cards ranging in price from $49 to $79 and they are ALL broadcom products. You can see the similarities in the physical construction of the card as soon as you take it out of the box. Slight differences in antenna shape, but always with the broadcommy squareness.

Also, you can order parts real cheap and configure them to put out a carrier on any frequency you want, so this really sounds like baloney. Not that it isn't the reason they're giving, but it isn't the reason. We're talking about less than 0.1 watt here. If the military doesn't like the signal they can just move to the livingroom. Seems to block it just fine from my experience.

So I have an awesome little laptop robot and I can only control it from windows or mac and I have another one that I haven't even bothered with because I can't operate them at the same time.

I don't feel very free to innovate.

So very true...

I'm going to give up mod points here just to chime in, since this is an issue I care about.

Anyone looking to get good wireless card support (802.11b) should buy one with a prism2 chip or an Orinoco. I know many that have had good luck with these cards, and I know for a fact that the Orinoco cards are essentially plug and play in linux. Do NOT buy the TI chipsets (sometimes marketed as 22mbps 802.11b+) or the Broadcom chipsets; word on the street (heh) is that these companies have been less than forthcoming with specs so people can write proper drivers for them.

It's too bad that this is the sad state of wireless support in linux, that we must be at the manufacturer's mercy to get our hardware working properly. I've been waiting for 2 years now to get my USB wireless card (oh yeah, avoid those too if you can) working in linux, and it's all because the company doesn't care.

Why does every vendor do the same thing?

It seems a little suspicious that 802.11b chipsets had none of these problems, but suddenly with a and g every vendor has a programmable radio and thus open source drivers can never be released.

SDRs and frequencies

Most of these cards have internal restrictions (such as firmware) preventing out-of-band operation. At least Prisms do.

Even with wide-open drivers, I don't think you can force most Prism cards out-of-band because the firmware restricts it. (Which sucks, because all it takes is a 55-question multiple choice test and you can legally run 802.11 cards out of the ISM band and at much higher powers - The 2.4 GHz amateur (ham) band is adjacent to the ISM band, and many cards can be reclassified under Part 97 rules.)

What I would love to see is open specs for a cable modem chipset - it would make a perfect exciter for an amateur data network if combined with a transverter.

Read the linked article, please.

People, come on, RTFA, ok?

This is not about 802.11b, it's about 802.11g, the newer standard. The one that can do 54 Mbps? Look arround for drivers for those chipsets (mostly Broadcom or Intel's). You'll find none. Why? Because these things can be programmed to receive *and* transmit on any frequency. Any. That inclues military frequencies. Building a receiver for any frequency is not rocket science. In fact it's boring since it's well known. The problem is that the FCC has to approve this things. The vendor builds it and they have to get approval from the FCC to market it. If the FCC catches word that the vendor is giving the specs to a bunch of hippies, the hardware might not get approved (nothing to do with the FCC per se, it's just politics). The problem is some people out there are _very_ willing to go on a disrupt police communications. And what could be easier that just taking a laptop on a car and just war drive. It gives a whole new meaning to the term, doesn't it?

Some people (RTFA) have proposed solutions, basically signed frequency tables, but since the hardware is out, it's too fscking late. That's going to be in the next gen hardware, but not in the current round. By the look of it, 802.11g on Linux is screwed for the time being.

Re:Read the linked article, please.

The FCC doesn't care if you give out the specs; the FCC just cares that there not be any way to send on restricted frequencies (and they'd like it if you can't receive on other restricted frequencies, either, at least not without knowing you're on a restricted frequency, so you can obey the law on disclosure of what you get).

Basically, the card makers may some stuff configurable which shouldn't be configurable, and they need to deal with getting it configured in the legal way by default. The tricky thing is that there isn't a universal legal default.

The situation is that it's illegal to disrupt police communications, and it's pretty easy, but it's also pretty obvious. If you're doing it, they can trivially track you down and arrest you. The manufacturer gets in trouble if you're doing it with an unmodified transmitter, because you might not realize you're breaking the law. If anyone who uses the SuSE driver for a Broadcom card (configured, of course, for Germany) in the US is breaking the law and causing problems for the police, someone will get in trouble, and it's likely to be Broadcom.

It was why I punted RH8 on my laptop

I needed a new router/firewall/AP, I bought the linksys g product, a couple of G cards, spent an afternoon looking for Broadcom support in linux and pitched Redhat for WXp as a result.

That laptop is mostly used for surfing the web and rdesktopping into other computers, I'd most likely put RH8 (9) BACK on it if Broadcom's g set was supported.

I can't be the only person that WANTS this. (and I DID lobby Broadcom and Linksys for driver support)

G band not finalized yet.

Maybe they aren't limiting the broadcast characteristics in firmware on the broadcomm G cards because they don't have a final spec yet and they are trying to keep the device/chipset as open as posisble so they can adapt to new changes in the specs if need be. I just wish that I could get it to work on my damn linux box cause right now I am running in mixed mode on my home wireless network.

ZiN

a bit ridiculous?

This seems a bit ridiculous seeing as how I can purchase or buy other devices that with little modification broadcasts over illegal frequencies. Even if they do hide the specs, the people that would want to access the frequency programming interface for "evil" purposes probably will anyway and the people who need to for legitimate purposes will just be pissed off.

They can do like proxim w/ rangelan/sympony cards

Proxim let a developer take a library written by them custom for him that allows him certain functions that he needs, it works with pcmcia, isa and pci cards. he just wrote a wrapper around this library and has no access to the internal workings of the actual chipset to protect their details for security I suppose. Maybe he can help someone find the way with these new chip makers since he worked out a deal with another company that was not going to release the internal details. From what I gathered from back when I used one, they built him the library and gave him the headers.

His source code distribution with prebuilt library is at:

http://www.komacke.com/distribution.html

I was able to use it for my laptop with a pcmcia card, my smp machine with pci card and pentium with an isa card on 2.2 and 2.4 kernels so the method obviously will work.

Oooo

I like the thought of suing companies for trespassing on my private property with their private radio transmissions.

I want to the FCC to made all radio signals private property so I can sue every radio station, police station, local TV, my neighbor and her noisy telephone, etc.

Hey, maybe we can declare all audio and electromagnetic transmissions private property so if you say something that offends me I can sue you, if it trespasses into my ear.

I think we should make a set of laws so everyone can sue everyone else. Then just sit back and watch the people line up outside the courthouse. Maybe we could make our legal system a profitable marketplace where you can purchase a new law to help you sue for more money, at a fair price, of course. :)

Potential for maliciousness...

So I'm curious if the proliferation of 802.11g wireless cards is going to mean that the next "Code Red" style internet worm is, among other things, going to target the wireless networking drivers for these cards?

Seems to me that thousands of infected laptops, all screaming at full power in the police band might cause a bit of problem for emergency services.

Is anyone familiar enough with emergency services reliance upon wireless communication (and their relative tolerance for interference, which is going to vary based upon the technology they use) to confirm my fears or allow me to sleep a little easier at night?

Closed-Source?

Okay, so where are the closed source drivers? Though I'd prefer Opensource, I'd really like to get an 802.11g card... But there's no support in Linux yet!

Abstract Driver Model?

So manufacturers don't want to give away design specs. They don't want to maintain 2 versions of a driver either. What kind of effort would it take to abstract the driver model to be OS independent? I'm not talking about overnight stuff here, but why should a driver care about who is talking to it? We have NTFS support on non-MS operating systems due to a virtual file system layer. You can tell me why it can't be done now, but why can't we overcome those obstacles? Maybe it will always just be a matter of speed/code efficiency talking to the hardware...

The issue may be military radar

There are potentially serious issues with 5 GHz. WLAN technologies and military radar avoidance. This is the case in both the U.S. and Europe. The IEEE is working on mechanisms to dynamically avoid these conflicts. I can understand why it could be bad to allow anybody out there with one of these devices to twiddle the knobs as they could cause serious problems. This doesn't, in my mind, rule out binary drivers.

IP argument

The IP argument for no Linux drivers seems a little odd. After all, they give away the binary drivers for windows, presumably in order to enhance the salability of the hardward. Of course, there are fewer Linux users, so you wouldn't expect every chip maker to produce a binary driver for Linux, but consider the position of some chipmaker whose market share is 5%. Adding Linux support would double his sales, (at least to start with.

Source code may be subject to other arguments, but it is truely odd that there are no binary drivers.

Secret because of the military?

I know when I proposed that my Marine unit use wireless instead of running Cat5 everywhere out in the open while on unit field ops, I got shot down quicker than hell because wireless isn't secure enough to meet our standards. Anyway, I know the Marine Corps won't be using wireless for a long while. Can't comment on other services.

Attempt being made reverse engineering TI ACX100

One of the currently unsupported wireless chipsets is the TI ACX100 chip, the one which features a non-standard 22mbit mode (but is downwards compatible with standard 11mbit 802.11b). This shipset is incorporated in products by SMC and DLink, among others.

This chipset is being reverse-engineered as we speak (or at least a group of brave people is trying hard to).

They are using the same approach that Compaq successfully took decades ago when they were reverse-engineering the IBM BIOS, while preventing legal issues: assigning the task of reverse-engineering and documenting the programming specifications to one group, while having another group, untainted by the reverse-engineered original code, creating a "clean-room" implementation, using only the unencumbered specs obtained from the first group.

Actually, the ACX100 project is divided in three groups, rather than two: one group for reverse-engineering the Windows drivers, a second group for reverse-engineering the (buggy) binary-only Linux drivers, and a third group to use the specs obtained from the other groups to reimplent a driver under a BSD license, which would be free from any IP owned by TI.

The site is here:

http://acx100.sourceforge.net

Apparently, they are having a hard time, although they have made impressive progress so far.

Like with any other useful project, please support these folks if you can! Even if you don't have time, can't code or don't have any money to offer, I'm sure that just giving them some encouragement would keep them motivated. :)

That said, it would indeed save us all a lot of time, effort and frustration if companies in general would simple be more willing to provide the community with the necessary specs to develop drivers. I can't believe the fact that those companies don't realise that there are enough talented people on the planet, who are prepared to develop high quality stable drivers without having to be paid to do so. Therefore, releasing the specs would be a no-brainer to me.

time to reward our friends among the vendors

I think from now on I am going to go out of my way to buy wireless cards, printers, and other accessories and peripherals only from those manufacturers that have helped make their stuff work with linux whenever I can.

For a long time, most of my stuff would work with linux, but when I started buying wireless cards a few years ago (dlink 650's), I had a hell of a time getting them working.

Does anyone know of a web page that makes it easy to find manufacturers that have actively supported linux?

Kernel hackers don't seem to understand radios

These kernel hackers seem to think the radio is DC-to-light, and if they got a driver working they could transmit on any frequency. 802.11 is 2.401 GHz to 2.473 Ghz (US & Canada, at least.) Alan Cox says:

I talked to one vendor about this stuff and fingers crossed we will see open drivers except for the radio module. In the longer term I suspect vendors will move to signed register sets, so you can load "US 802.11g" but you can't load "police frequency, full power"

In the US, most police frequencies are mid-UHF (400 MHz area) or 800 MHz. There's not much chance of a 2.4 GHz radio interfering with that. Radio design involves tradeoffs - other things being equal, a radio covering less bandwidth has higher performance. I really doubt that 802.11 radios are capable of much bandwidth outside their designed frequency range. I think this is yet another case of software folks applying the logic of infinite capability to the physical world where capabilities are very restricted.

I can think of reasons for restricting the interface which are less dramatic. First I thought of regulating transmit power - CDMA phones regulate their power based on instructions from the base station. This increases the overall capacity of the system by reducing unneeded transmission. But that doesn't seem to be it, because a google search shows a discussion of controlling 802.11 transmit power in NetBSD. [216.239.33.100].

Then there's information security/crypto export. Maybe an open driver would enable users to use stronger cryptography in generating the spreading sequence. Or maybe it's just natural corporate paranoia.

Some factual corrections to the article...

Contrary to popular opinion, there is no FCC regulation prohibiting one from receiving some particular frequency. There is, however, a federal law prohibiting the disclosure of a radio message by a third party. This means that the media, or even law enforcement can't listen to a private radio (cell phone) conversation and then disclose its content.

Congress passed another law in the mid-1980s that forbids manufacture, import, and sale of receivers capable of hearing cell phone transmissions. This was at the behest of cellular phone companies, who wanted customers to have some faith that analog cell phones had a reasonable level of privacy. So only really dedicated eavesdroppers would be listening in, not the average schmuck with a scanner.

At one time, cell phones used FM at 960 MHz. This could be readily received by receivers designed for Amateur Radio use. For a time, the FCC refused to Type Approve receivers that cover these frequencies. However, most Hams know how to fix their receivers so they can receive whatever they want and Type Approval was only required for receivers that were designed to be sold.

The receivers in question are scanners, not Amateur Radio gear. It applies to ham gear only because some ham gear includes scanner capability as an extra feature. But "police radio" scanners are much more common. And yes, the law still is in effect!

But what about the serial drivers

I know OSS is about coders scratching an itch and writing drivers for stuff that they are interested in at the moment, but what about the serial drivers in the 2.5.6x kernel? Many of them are still using cli(), sti() and friends. This is deep juju, too deep for a code cleaner like me to do. Even generic-serial is still using the old method. I can fix other things like 'flags' should be unsigned long, but redoing irq handling needs people who know what is going on.

Source of the militray BS

The reason for the "protect military coms" is that years ago at teh end of WW2, NATO decided that the 800/900 Mhz should be split so that the military use one half and civilians get the other half. The US used and NATO used an opposite arrangement so that if US troops needed to go in to Europe, their military radios would not interfer with the local military radios.

This happeden on other frequencies as well but most of the WAN frequences are out of the rubbish heap.

2.4 is sort of no-mans land. Until recently it was a useless frequency because its noisy and water absorbs the signal. Because it was mostly unused and unusable it was assigned to the IMS band and opened up. Becaue it was free, the coordless phone people went after it and helped to develop ways of dealing with the issues that only happen at 2.4. Now Wifi does many of the same things.

There are some areas near 3.5 that are Non Line of Sight but only for interference but are very line of sight for the sight for the singal. For some reason a 1 W signal will only go about 2 miles LOS but interference can bounce around for over 30 miles. Most of the 3.5 was sold off to spectrum grabbers and there are a few people putting a few WISP using it since its useless for anything that doesn't have very strong error correction.

5.2/5.8 (802.11a) Is/was used for sat uplinks. Maybe some of them are militray but the US allows both while many places in SE Asia don't. For example Oz allows 5.8 but 5.2 can only be used indoors, NZ allows 5.2 almost like the FCC but 5.8 has some conditions on it.

PCI Drivers Are Even Harder To Find

I had been using my iBook and my WinXP laptop from work on my Airport driven home network. I also have a desktop dual booting WinXP and RH8 (now 9.) I picked up a new Belkin 802.11b PCI card on eBay one day and went completely sans wires. I then had a monumental struggle trying to get this to work in Linux, only to give up. That was a couple of months ago and I haven't booted in Linux since.

What is really needed is a definitive how-to website sponsored by a major distro. I've dealt with crazy video card driver and USB device driver issues before in Linux, but nothing was as fucked up as wireless. I had a hell of a time just finding out what chipset my card was using and then trying to find drivers for it. The built in GUI in RH was useless for me.

Of course if there's anybody out there that has had success with this card, ummmm....

Security through obscurity

This is security through obscurity and it doesn't work. Oh wait! There's the DMCA, so maybe it does if developers get arrested for reverse engineering the chips. Anyway. I won't taint my kernel with binary only drivers under obscure EULAs.

The author that cites...

the Communications Act of 1934 did not do their homework. In 1986, a huge body of law was enacted in the US to "prevent" listening in on cell phone conversations and any other communication "not intended for your receipt". The text of the ECPA [cpsr.org] is not very useful in itself; you must read the redacted Title Title 18 USC, Sec. 2510 [gpo.gov].

Just to pick a nit...

the FCC does not regulate military frequencies. The military has it's own equivalent to the FCC. The two organizations do coordinate, however.

Anarchists

I suspect with articles like this, whether they are true or not, that anarchists will start sharing information over Freenet [sourceforge.net] about how to spew 5Ghz energy from any wall socket -- not even using parts from Radio Shack, which tracks your identity and parts you buy from them (or at least did for all the years I was growing up).

Can't the guvvies figure out something to do that isn't so vulnerable to attack and that doesn't annoy the taxpayers so? Stupid as they are, it's hard to beleive they're _that_ stupid.

Re:If radio broadcasts are public property...

You can recieve DirecTV all you want, but to decrypt you have to use stolen IP from Hughes (or whoever) in the form of the hacked keys on the smartcard.

IIRC, satellite is a microwave device and falls under the "shaped wave" clauses as well, I dunno, I ain't an FCC guy.

BTW, and American Idol is broadcast absolutely free on your local Fox affiliate. Help yourself.

Re:Yet Another Shining Example

Carmack released the source for Doom and Quake (and Quake II) after they'd finish their run, yes, but long, long before that there had been Linux versions of Doom, Doom II, Quake, Quake II, AND Quake III for a long, long time. Remember, Quake III had a linux port that shipped the same time as the Windows and Mac ports, and they're planning a Linux port for Doom III as well.

Please get your facts straight before making comments like that...I mean, a quick google would have told you about the Linux ports of those games.

Carmack releasing the source to the Dooms and the Quakes is just his way of giving back to the community that buys the games, makes the mods, and keeps playing. And its a nice way for the mod makers to create even better mods (since they have access to the engine code, and can extend it however they want).

Have a nice day.

Re:Yet Another Shining Example

Of sloppy, cheap marketing and rushed engineering instead of solid hardware design!
This is like winmodems. They are "cheaper" just to save a few dimes instead of being truly independant devices. They want to save a buck by making these wireless cards merely transmitters, and relying on the embedding company to "finish" the product. The integrators don't want to share, because they all use the same chips, so software is the only defining quality between their products! Unfortunately, this doesn't look like it will change any time soon. BillyG has every one addicted to cheap hardware instead of paying for quality.